And into the land of sepia storytelling we go... At least we get more glorious Han faces.

The most exciting part of this strip for me is that Jabba is mentioned. His was my favourite character re-interpretation in Darths & Droids outside of the main cast and I'll be seriously disappointed if he doesn't make an appearance now.

Will this whole arc be a flashback? It'd be fun to see Corey and/or Ben inject themselves into the story, maybe forcing the GM to tell it from a different perspective, or just change what happened.

I will miss the Han faces though. I hope those stick around for a while.

— aurilee

This is my first exposure to the actual images from the movie.

... and I'm reaching for the "color" knob. Where's the saturation?

I do not have a transcript. Just the image. We start with a GM-colored, square, "It all began on Tatooine, 19 years after Padmé became Vader"—reference the "I am your mother" scene—followed by a square, player-colored "The adventure begins on Tatooine, 19 years after Anakin killed Padmé". With no arrow to tell which person said it.

So, I'm trying to make sense of this. Probably obvious to those of you that saw this movie.

I think that this is a case of Current-DM saying "began ... Padmé became Vader", and a flashback to a Past-DM saying "Begins ... Anakin killed Padmé". So this is saying that this actually is a flashback to what happened—matched by the descriptions of "You weren't even there", and "They were Jabba's minions", etc.

So let's back up one strip for a moment.

They played 4 sessions before Corey joined, and then one more before Ben. We walked into that at the start of Episode IV, when the players were playing the "same" characters: Luke and Leia (a.k.a. the children of the first movie characters), the same robots, etc.

So while reading #1531, I thought they were playing the "same" characters or at least the next generation of them. Jim's characters dying, and people always telling him, "He's dead, Jim", (Side note: That joke was why you had Jim churning characters, right?) meant that Jim was playing a new character, Captain Antilles, err ... Greedo.

But now? It looks like they did run that other adventure, with everyone having new characters. And then, something happens, and everyone switches to the characters/children from the first. In other words, at some point in Rogue One there will be a TPK, as referenced in the previous strip.

So it looks like we are going to be focusing on the characters that are responsible for getting the "weapon-included" first Peace Moon plans (not the weapon-removed first one that R2 got, nor the second one that Wedge recovered). And, it looks like after they get the plans to the Moon, there will be a TPK. A pyrrhic victory for the characters of Rogue One, but definitely a victory for the forces of the Rebellion. (Err, Leberrion. :-)

Alright, what else can be milked out of this image? Jim's minions: so whichever "good guy" rebel Jim was playing, he thought he was controlling an army of rebel scum. Err, actually, Jabba's Minions: so whatever hardship Jabba went into from losing money on the rigged podrace in Episode I, he has recovered enough by now to run a Mob at least as good as Shmi's. Err, actually, Anakin killed Shmi: so when he left the power vacuum, was he the reason for Jabba (and the Hutt family)'s rise to power?

Transcript

GM: It all began on Tatooine, 19 years after Padmé became Vader...GM: {flashback sepia} The adventure begins on Tatooine, 19 years after Anakin killed Padmé.Jim: Yeah, it was awesome! There was a huge fight with armies and walkers and a star destroyer! I was in charge of the whole thing.
{flashback sepia scenes of a battle}[SFX]: Pow! Pow! Pow!Pete: You weren't even there, Jim.Jim: They were my minions who emerged victorious. Same thing.Pete: Technically they were Jabba's minions.Sally: And that wasn't even the start of the adventure!Ben: Is anything Jim said true?
{flashback battle continues in background}[SFX]: Pow![SFX]: Kaboom!Jim: It was definitely awesome!